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The Steele Big Lie Trap

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele decided to go all-in with a public demonstration of his anti-science syndrome (ASS) crredentials.

And when a listener scoffed at the notion of global warming, Steele eagerly ran with the baton.

“Thank you, thank you,” he said. “We are cooling. We are not warming. The warming you see out there, the supposed warming, and I am using my finger quotation marks here, is part of the cooling process. Greenland, which is now covered in ice, it was once called Greenland for a reason, right? Iceland, which is now green. Oh I love this.”

As Sam Stein of Huffington Post explains:

Greenland, for the record, likely had forestation some 450,000 to 800,000 years ago. But its name was derived, as is most commonly believed, from Erik the Red, who wanted to trick people into going to that island as opposed to the more hospitable Iceland.

Yes, Michael, it was called Greenland for a reason: to deceive people. Ever so fitting that you would seize on that as you seek to be deny the work of scientists and push ideology over the scientific method.

In any event, air quotes aside, Steele is 180 degrees away from the truth. There is not a cooling process and, yes, sadly, we are warming.

Back to Steele, the sentences that followed the material above:

Like we know what this planet is all about. How long have we been here? How long? No very long.

Well, Michael, are we talking the time of your interview, your lifespan, the time since 1776, or, I guess, the 6000 years that the Earth has been in existence according to you?

Evidently, Michael believes that scientists and science can’t tell us anything about time before humanity.